Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 47 (Patreon)

Tibs stood among the other supplicants—Peolo had called them—in the uncomfortable clothing that had been provided. A shirt and path in rough fabric, hard leather sandals that did nothing to protect him. When he pointed that out, the cleric smiled and said fighting was not what that section of the dungeon was about.

No one looked at him, or each other, as they were led to the dungeon entrance. Unlike the one in his town, this entrance was level with the ground leading to the mountain it was in.

“Oh,” a female voice said once Tibs was within knife-throwing range of the opening, “the next groups here! Craren, you have to come see…” she trailed off. “Craren, get here. What’s with that one?”

Tibs fought the urge to look around at the unseen voice. He hadn’t thought he’d hear the dungeon here. He and Sto were close friends. Had been so even before Tibs could hear him, so he’d expected that was the reason he heard him and Ganny. If he could also hear this dungeon, did it mean he could hear all of them?

“Huh?” another unseen voice said, sounding like she was approaching. “What is it? A rogue? We don’t see a lot of those.”

“Not that. Look,” the dungeon said.

“I am looking, Val.”

“You’re looking. I need you to Look.”

“What is that—what in Purity’s light is that?”

“I was wondering the same thing. Have you ever seen someone with more than one element? Did we ever have one come in? Your memory’s better than mine.”

“No, we haven’t, and I’ve never seen one. That’s not possible. Why is he here?” Craren asked.

“How would I know?” Val replied.

“I think we could keep him from getting in. That can’t be a good thing.”

“Sure, how do I do that? If I stop all of them from entering, it’s going to raise questions. He’s in the middle of the pack. I can’t just close my door as he’s about to enter. I’m going to crush whoever in front of him.”

Tibs forced himself to ignore the dungeon, and her assistant, as a man stepped before the open door. He wished that, like his ability to sense the surrounding essence, this was something he could stop doing.

“Welcome supplicants,” the man said, his voice carrying over the crowd of five and zero people—Peolo had told him that was always the number of supplicants who entered the dungeon for the audience.

“He’s after Purity,” Craren said. “Look, he doesn’t have it.”

“I’m not giving it to him!”

Tibs closed his eyes and wished those two would be quiet. He needed to hear the instructions the man gave.

“Today, you are embarking on a journey that will last you a lifetime. Those of you who return with your element will become the guardians of our world. Through your swords, your bows, your halberds, and your shields, you will keep corruption and chaos from gaining a foothold. You will fight them back where they try to enter. You will protect your brothers and sisters in your element as they go about healing the damage they have caused, and when you fall, even if it is today, you will do so knowing your hard work has made the words safer for the others who don’t have the privilege of serving Purity.”

“To serve is to be Pure!” the crowd replied. Tibs did so. Although enough out of step, the girl on his left glanced at him before looking ahead again. Peolo had taught him the response but didn’t have the years of experience giving it.

“Your devotion began years ago, but your test starts today. The dungeon will test your dedication to Purity through hard work. Through testing your willingness to endure hardship and resist temptation. The fifty of you will enter, and at each junction, you will split away from the person in front of you. You will repeat this until you are walking alone, as we all do in this life, other than with Purity. That is when the dungeon will begin testing you, putting obstacles in your way. You can turn back at any time. There is no shame in finding your limit and realizing you are not yet worthy of your audience. You will be welcomed and returned to your study and meditations.”

“To know is to be Pure!” This time Tibs was in step.

“We are not like the others, who throw anyone in their dungeon simply to make it grow stronger. Our dungeon is here to help us along in our fight against the enemies of the world. Some of you will fall, today, tomorrow, as part of your training, or against the enemies, but it will not be because you were unprepared. We are the world’s army, and we will be ready!”

“To fight is to be Pure!” Tibs said with the others and realized the dungeon was quiet. He couldn’t decide if her no longer commenting on him was a good or bad thing.

The man stepped aside, and the crowd entered the dungeon. Unlike Sto, the entrance was undecorated. Plain gray stone formed an archway wide enough for two people, but the supplicants lined up one by one as they entered. The entrance hall was shorter than the one Sto made, and the illumination came from the walls themselves instead of the light stones he had at regular intervals.

Instead of ending at a room, the hall split into two, and the man before Tibs took the left branch, so he took the right one. When the next branch occurred, he took the left, to the right the woman before him took, then another left and two rights. After the next left, he couldn’t see the person in front of him, but he heard their footsteps. At the junction, he needed to listen to figure out they’d gone right, so he went left.

He thought he was alone now, but he came across another fork. Listening as hard as he could, he heard nothing.

“I’ll give him that,” Val said. “He takes this seriously.”

“If he’s hunting all the essences, he’d have to,” Craren replied.

“How do you think he does it? Doesn’t the element just kill anyone trying to have more than one?”

“As far as I know. You think he can make out the one who went left?”

“The sound doesn’t travel this far.”

Tibs entered the right branch.

“Lucky,” Val said. “You think that him being a rogue has something to do with his ability to survive the audiences? The few rogues we’ve seen come through were tricky.”

“Then he’s out of luck,” Craren said mockingly. “You don’t trick Purity.”

“I don’t think we should risk it.”

“Are you saying you don’t have faith in your main essence?”

“Our job is to make sure only the worthy have their audience, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

“He isn’t worthy, so he’s not getting an audience.”

Tibs smiled to himself. He was going to prove to them who was the most determined of the three of them. Of course, being able to listen in on their conversation gave him an edge. Not that it told him what he was supposed to do with the stone wall blocking his path when he encountered it.

“Turn around, essence boy,” Val said. “This is the end of your quest.”

Unlikely, Tibs thought. The requirements to have an audience were only a heightened emotional state while in the presence of a high concentration of the essence of the element he wanted the audience with. While the walls, ceiling, and floor looked like stone, the essence there wasn’t primarily stone, but one of those he couldn’t identify. Since this was used to get an audience with Purity, it had to be that essence.

He ran a hand over the wall, felt the essence in it. The stone was woven through the other essence. It reminded him of what Sto did with his walls, only he used corruption, water, fires, and a few other essences Tibs couldn’t identify. This was neater, purer. Which made sense for a purity dungeon.

Since the dungeon knew he had multiple essences, he had no problem reaching for the earth essence in the stone block before him and pulling it out of the weave.

“What’s he doing?” the dungeon demanded.

“You said it, Val. Rogues are sneaky. He’s undoing the weave that makes out the door.”

“He can’t do that!” Val replied, offended.

“Of course I can,” Tibs whispered, smiling, and immediately cursed himself as silence fell. He kept working on pulling the essence out, not going faster or slower, and hoped they’d think it was only a coincidence he’d replied to her. He knew better. Sto heard anything within himself he focused on, and those two were definitely focusing on him.

“Did he just reply to me?” the dungeon asked, uncertainly making her sound fearful.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Craren answered. “They can’t hear us. He’s talking to himself. You know how they get when they’re removed from the people they keep around them. Talk talk talk. Humans just don’t appreciate the silence like we do.”

Tibs would appreciate silence right now. Undoing the weave wasn’t difficult, but he was so used to conversing with Sto he had to fight the urge to do that here. As he removed the last of a patch on the side of his hand, the other essence unraveled and the stone faded. Through it, he was in another hallway. Was this dungeon all hallways and no room?

“Why did that just fall apart?” Val asked.

“Because purity isn’t solid,” Craren replied. “You know that.”

“Are telling me I’m going to have to redesign everything?”

“Only if you expect to have another like him. They’re not supposed to be able to manipulate essence when they do this floor, cheater. That’s what he. He’s a cheater.”

“He’s a rogue,” Val said. “It’s kind of what they do.”

Tibs smiled. For someone who’d admitted didn’t get many visits from rogues, they had left quite an impression. When he had enough of the block removed, he slipped through.

“I hate that I can’t just encase him in there. How bad would it be if I just crushed him? I mean, who’d know?”

Tibs forced himself to continue walking. Could she do that? Just change things while he was there? He tried to remember what Sto had said, but he could only remember having to exit a room for him to make changes.

“You’d know,” Craren replied. “How comfortable are you with breaking the rules? It isn’t like anyone is looking over your work after a few millennia without causing problems.”

“Why do I have to be so cursed by the book?”

Tibs relaxed.

“I’m making changes ahead,” the dungeon said. “Let him get through that.”

Ahead proved to be far enough, Tibs stopped counting. He knew higher than nine and nine, but it became a hassle to do it in his head. The hall widened into a semblance of a room, blocked in the middle by stalagmites and stalactites that had grown until they almost touched. It reminded him of a dog’s or cat’s mouth, with sharp teeth.

He snorted. “Come on, you think that’s going to stop me?” He stepped forward and stopped. “Yeah, this is too easy.”

The dungeon chuckled.

Tibs studied the floor, visually and with sensing the essences. Like the walks and the door that had blocked his way. It was mainly earth woven through the other essence. No traps. Not dealing with many rogues seemed to mean Val didn’t have rogue-centered rooms.

Purity was about hard work, and climbing to the gaps, and then finding one he could slip through wouldn’t be easy, but it wouldn’t stop him. The stalagmites didn’t have purposely made handholds, but they were also not so smooth Tibs couldn’t find cracks and gaps to grab on and pull himself up with.

He made it to the gap in a few minutes and grabbed into the opening to study it. Pain lanced through his hand, making him let go, then lose his balance. He landed on his back hard enough he had trouble breathing as the dungeon laughed.

“Oh, I bet you think this is funny,” Tibs groaned, and she fell silent. Tibs cursed as he looked at his hand. The palm and fingers were cut open in multiple places. He felt for the state of the rest of his body before stopping the blood flow with a wrap of his essence around his hand.

“Craren,” Val called, worried. “He’s got life!”

“That’s impossible,” the assistant replied. “Only dungeon have that essence.”

“Then tell me what he just did!”

“How did I miss it?” Craren mused.

The same way most people missed important details, Tibs mentally answered as he forced himself to his feet. By getting distracted by the not important ones. Like how he’d let the ease of the climb distract him from sensing ahead. He flexed his fingers of his injured hand to ensure the essence wrap moved with them. It was the first time he’d used it in a nimble part. Legs, arms, chests were the usual injuries.

This time, the climb took nearly ten minutes. His hand slowed him as pain lanced each time he put the weight needed to pull himself upon it, but he also took the time to sense ahead. He didn’t put it past Val to change his handholds.

As he moved, Val and Craren talked over what his ability to use life’s essence meant. Val suggested Tibs was a dungeon creation that had gotten out and now was… she couldn’t figure out why a creation would be here. Craren pointed out that creations couldn’t manipulate essence. Only living creatures could do that. Was he a dungeon that has somehow figured out how to step outside? Wouldn’t that explain how he’s seemed to respond to her comments a few times?

That, Craven had replied, was patently impossible. The core of a dungeon was locked to the dungeon. If one had figured out how to leave, the dungeon itself would have fallen apart afterward and that would have become known.

As Tibs reached the open between the teeth, they decided that he’d stolen that essence, just like he’d clearly stolen every other of the essence he had, and planned on doing with Purity, if he was allowed to have an audience.

Tibs felt the essence on the other side of the peak. It wasn’t what he thought of as purity. The way it was in narrow lines side by side made him think of blades, so he decided metal. He coated his hand with water and earth—without his bracers, that’s all he could do— and hardened them before reaching for purchase.

“Cheater,” Craren said as he pulled himself enough to look. Metal blades lined that side of the stalagmites’ peaks. Thin and close together. He couldn’t look down to determine how far they went.

He moved sideways until he could fit. The blades only went down one arm’s length. Looking up, the stalactites didn’t have them, so he reached there, found handholds, gritted his teeth, and pulled himself through and over the blades. With a swing, he dropped beyond them and slid down to the floor.

“You have to give him that,” Val said, “he’s resourceful.”

“We don’t have to give him anything, do we?” Craven replied.

“No, we certainly don’t. Especially not light.”

It was dark. The kind of dark that made a shiver run down Tibs’s back. He saw nothing.

He’d worked at night long enough that even before gaining darkness as an element, he always saw well in the dark. He suspected that if he’d been in a better state to appreciate it, the Dark Night would have felt like this. This was the darkness of bards’ stories when the truly evil things came out. The kind of creatures Tibs didn’t need to be told existed. He just knew they were there. That any steps he made could cause him to step into one of them and suffering a fate that would be worse than death.

He didn’t call forth the light. It was a reaction born of the fear that in darkness lay only bad things.

His breathing slower as the glow around his hand intensified until he made out the floor for a few paces around him.

“That is such a cheat!” Craren said.

“He has light as an element, we should have expected it.”

“Okay,” Tibs told the darkness beyond his light. “That was well played.”

“And it looks like he can appreciate a cunning plan,” Val said.

“That he beat,” Craren replied bitterly. Tibs preferred Ganny. She was more fun, less interested in winning. Maybe it was because both were so young. Craren had spoken of millennia. Tibs didn’t know how many years that was, but there was a sense of a long time to the word.

Getting himself to step forward was harder than it should be. He could see where he stepped, but a scared voice at the back of his mind clamored that something would leap at him out of that darkness at any moment now. That only by remaining in place would he be safe.

And it wasn’t like he needed to move, another part, not as afraid, but willing to side with his fear, point out. He’d done hunger to reach two audiences. He could do it again.

He could, he agreed with it, but to give in to his fear was letting Val and Craren win. It was their plan, and Tibs wouldn’t go along with it.

He placed a foot down, then another, and another. He walked slower than he’d prefer, but he walked forward. Once he was out of the room, that he reached whatever constituted the next room in this dungeon, he’d deal with the next challenge, and that one wouldn’t be in the dark.

Oh, abyss. He hoped there was light for the next challenge.